Day 125: The Four-Day Week on Stage
On a stage at the Hannover Messe, the presenter, Arne Tiedemann (A), asks Kirsten Hollmann (B), the chief executive of a machine maker, Gunnar Reese (C), who chairs its works council, and Derya Aksoy (D), a young start-up founder, about the four-day week.
How to study this lesson 3 steps
- Read the situation under the title. It says who is talking and how they know each other, which decides how politely they speak.
- Read the dialogue line by line with its translation, until every line makes sense. Point at (or tap) a German word to see what it means.
- Spend at least 30 minutes listening to native German, for example from the Resources page. It doesn't matter if you don't understand it yet.
Dialogue
Audio recordings are on the way. For now, each lesson is the dialogue with its English translation.
Keys: E hide English · ← → previous / next day · point at a word to see its meaning
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A
Frau Hollmann, Ihr Betriebsrat will mit der Viertagewoche bei vollem Lohn gegen den Fachkräftemangel angehen. Kann sich ein mittelständischer Maschinenbauer das überhaupt leisten?
Mrs Hollmann, your works council wants to tackle the shortage of skilled workers with a four-day week on full pay. Can a medium-sized machine maker even afford that?
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B
Unsere Kunden warten nicht bis Montag, wenn bei ihnen freitags eine Anlage stillsteht. Solche Ausfälle kann ich nicht einfach in Kauf nehmen.
Our customers won't wait until Monday if one of their machines is down on a Friday. I simply can't accept that kind of downtime.
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C
Das verlangt auch niemand, Frau Hollmann. Statt Stunden zu zählen, sollten wir endlich Ergebnisse messen, und für den Service am Freitag gibt es Schichtmodelle.
Nobody's asking you to, Mrs Hollmann. Instead of counting hours, we should finally start measuring results, and there are shift models for Friday service calls.
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A
Frau Aksoy, Ihr Start-up hat genau das ein Jahr lang ausprobiert. Sie dürften also die Einzige hier oben sein, die aus Erfahrung spricht.
Ms Aksoy, your start-up tried exactly that for a year. So you're probably the only one up here speaking from experience.
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D
Stimmt, bei vollem Gehalt und mit allen zwölf Leuten. Seit Januar arbeiten wir allerdings wieder fünf Tage.
That's right, on full pay and with all twelve of us. Since January, though, we've been back to five days.
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B
Lassen Sie mich raten: Die Produktivität ist eingebrochen, und Sie mussten die Reißleine ziehen.
Let me guess: productivity collapsed and you had to pull the plug.
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D
Im Gegenteil, die Zahlen waren hervorragend. Aber statt Pausen zu machen, hat mein Team vier Tage lang durchgearbeitet, und der Freitag ging nur noch fürs Erholen drauf.
Quite the opposite, the figures were excellent. But instead of taking breaks, my team worked flat out for four days, and Friday was used up just recovering.
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C
Und wer hat die Entscheidung getroffen, zur Fünftagewoche zurückzukehren? Doch sicher nicht die Belegschaft.
And who made the decision to go back to five days? Surely not the staff.
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D
Doch, genau die, und zwar in einer anonymen Abstimmung. Die Leute wollten wieder einen Kaffee mit Kollegen trinken, ohne dabei auf die Uhr zu schauen.
Yes, them exactly, and in an anonymous vote at that. People wanted to have a coffee with colleagues again without keeping an eye on the clock.
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